Overview

For the purposes of these pages archival is moving data onto long term storage (in this case tape) then removing it from rapid access storage in order to free up rapid access storage. Data moved onto archival medium should not be expected to be accessed (retrieval time is long,) but cannot be simply deleted. Data can be kept indefinitely (although tape has a 15 year shelf-life, and tape drives have a shorter life than this.)

Protocol

Group procures an LTO4 (800GB) or LTO5 (1500GB) tapes as appropriate.

CO creates a new ZFS filesystem called archive and makes it available to group who want to archive by mounting it under the group's share on larch.

After the group is ready the archive filesystem will be closed and moved to /group/archive

Archive tapes should be loaded in auto-changer

Archive run when library is not busy & verified

Archive tapes returned to group to store safely

Archive filesystem destroyed

File recording tape contents saved on Larch

If data is required again the tape must be returned to CO to extract data. This will take a long time, probably several days.

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